The International House of Mojo

Full Throttle 2: Hell on Wheels was very disappointing. Hopefully at some point the game will start to resemble the beautiful concept art we saw whilst at LucasArts. However, as it stands I fail to see how they can make the game stand up to the legacy of Schafer.

When we first walked up to the FT2 booth, we were asked "so are you the guys from Mixnmojo who hate the game, or like it?" While funny, I don't think that's a very fair question. As a game I have no problems with FT2. I think it looks decent now and will look lovely in 6 months. Combination of hand to hand and vehicular combat with a story? Sounds great, I love it! What gets me, though, is that it says "Full Throttle" at the top of this preview. Despite everything else Hell on Wheels has going for it, will it manage to capture the darker serious side, the real moody atmosphere of Full Throttle 1? I have my doubts.

I wrote this preview so why am I talking again? Oh well. Spaff and Jake gave me a hard time at E3 for being the sole voice of optimism about this one. Did I think Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels completely sucked? No. Do I think it could be the best thing ever? Well, no. While this isn't a game IÕm going to be counting the days until I can play, I'm still interested. The individual gangs with their own cool themes (except maybe the Cave Fish) have a lot of potential. In addition, the inclusion of the old style Full Throttle 1 interface seems promising. The music and dialogue should both be up to LucasArts standards, so as long as they make the gameplay mildly interesting, I think it could be okay. Maybe not great, but okay

The concept art for Hell On Wheels looks absolutely gorgeous and I fully support the idea of a Full Throttle sequel in 3D. Sadly, the graphics are not what I imagined them to be, in particular the character models. Hopefully the story will retain the dark, post-apocalyptic, anti-corporate thing the first game had going. But if those themes are to be made believable, some improvements need to be made in the graphics department.

I think the actiony-adventurey Full Throttle 2 has enough potential that I'll probably play it when it comes out. However, the most important aspect of a game for me is atmosphere, and this new demo just didn't deliver what the original holds. Fact 1: Atmosphere is about 95% of what keeps me replaying my favorite games over and over. Fact 2: The character design and scenery of the Full Throttle 2 demo gave me (unpleasant) flashbacks to Escape from Monkey Island. Fact 3: Despite the fact that I call "the Monkey Island series" my favorite games ever, I still have never played EMI for a second time. I fear Full Throttle 2 will suffer the same fate.

You can avoid my opinion by scrolling up (or scrolling down!). I have a mixed view of Hell on Wheels from what I saw at the demo. I was underwhelmed at the quality & smoothness of the character animation, but I think that they did a good job of capturing the mix between cartoonish and realistic features from the first game. What wasn't shown in great detail in the demo were the adventurey/puzzley elements, but I liked that the familiar skull verb interface will be there.

Now keep in mind I wasn't at E3 so I don't know anything you don't and you're best to read the thoughts of those who were there. I haven't seen much from the game so, like you, I have to be nitpicky about really tiny stupid things, so here's a thing that kind of irritated me: In the trailers when all the characters are just standing around preparing for a fight they just bob around and look like characters from Street Fighter which is maybe what they designers wanted, but I think it looks silly. Anyway those are my baseless and stupid brilliant thoughts on FT II.

Ow-owowowow! Mama mia!